Aphrodite
Aphrodite (Greek ) is the Greek goddess of love, beauty, and sexuality. Her Roman equivalent is the goddess . Historically, her cult in Greece was imported from, or influenced by, the cult of Astarte in Phoenicia. According to Hesiod's Theogony, she was born when Cronus cut off Uranus' genitals and threw them into the sea, and from the sea foam (aphros) arose Aphrodite. Because of her beauty other gods feared that jealousy would interrupt the peace among them and lead to war, and so Zeus married her to Hephaestus, who was not viewed as a threat. Aphrodite had many lovers, both gods like Ares, and men like Anchises. Aphrodite also became instrumental in the Eros and Psyche legend, and later was both Adonis' lover and his surrogate mother. Many lesser beings were said to be children of Aphrodite. Aphrodite is also known as Cytherea (Lady of Cythera) and Cypris (Lady of Cyprus) after the two cult-sites, Cythera and Cyprus, which claimed her birth. Myrtles, doves, sparrows, horses, and swans are sacred to her. The Greeks further identified the Ancient Egyptian goddess Hathor with Aphrodite.Reginald Eldred Witt, Isis in the ancient world (Johns Hopkins University Press) 1997:125. ISBN 0-8018-5642-6 Aphrodite also has many other local names, such as Acidalia, Cytherea and Cerigo, used in specific areas of Greece. Each goddess demanded a slightly different cult but Greeks recognized in their overall similarities the one Aphrodite. Attic philosophers of the fourth century separated a celestial Aphrodite (Aprodite Urania) of transcendent principles with the common Aphrodite of the people (Aphrodite Pandemos). Name The archaic (Homeric) pronunciation of the name was approximately . In Koine Greek, this became , changing further to in Byzantine Greek by itacism. The most common English pronunciation of Aphrodite is . The etymology of Greek is unknown. Hesiod connects it by with (aphros) "foam," interpreting it as "risen from the foam".Hesiod, Theogony, 176ff. This has been widely classified as a folk etymology, and numerous speculative etymologies, many of them non-Greek, have been suggested in scholarship. But Janda (2010) considers the connection with "foam" genuine, identifying the myth of Aphrodite rising out of the waters after Cronus defeats Uranus as a mytheme of Proto-Indo-European age. According to this interpretation, the name is from aphros "foam" and deato "to shine", meaning "she who shines from the foam ocean", a byname of the dawn goddess (Eos).Janda, Michael, Die Musik nach dem Chaos, Innsbruck 2010, p. 65 J.P. Mallory and D.Q. Adams (1997)Mallory, J.P. and D.Q. Adams. Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture. London: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishing, 1997. have also proposed an etymology based on the connection with the Indo-European dawn goddess, from "very" and "to shine". A number of speculative non-Greek etymologies have been suggested in scholarship. The connection to Phoenician religion claimed by Herodotus I.105,131) has led to inconclusive attempts at deriving Greek Aphrodite from a Semitic Aštoret, via hypothetical Hittite transmission. Another Semitic etymology compares Assyrian barīrītu, the name of a female demon found in Middle Babylonian and Late Babylonian texts.see Chicago Assyrian Dictionary vol. 2 p. 111 The name probably means "she who (comes) at dusk," which would identify Aphrodite in her personification as the evening star, a significant parallel she shares with Mesopotamian Ishtar. Another non-Greek etymology suggested by M. Hammarström,In Glotta: Zeitschrift für griechische und lateinische Sprache 11, 21 5f. looks to Etruscan, comparing (e)pruni "lord", an Etruscan honorific loaned into Greek as πρύτανις. This would make the theonym in origin an honorific, "the lady". Hjalmar Frisk rejects this etymology as implausible. The Etymologicum Magnum presents a medieval learned pseudo-etymology, explaining Aphrodite as derived from the compound habrodiaitos ("she who lives delicately" from habros + diaita) explaining the alternation between b'' and ''ph as a "familiar" characteristic of Greek "obvious from the Macedonians".Etymologicum Magnum, Ἀφροδίτη Comparative mythology Ancient Near Eastern parallels The religions of the Ancient Near East have a number of love goddesses that can be argued to be predecessors of certain aspects of Aphrodite. The Sumerian love goddess was Inanna, reflected as Ishtar/Astarte in Semitic religion. Other comparanda are Armenian Astghikand Etruscan Turan. Hans Georg Wunderlich further connects Aphrodite with the Minoan snake goddess.Wunderlich (R. Winston, tr.).The secret of Crete (1987:134) The Egyptian snake goddess Wadjet was asocciated with the city known to the Greeks as Aphroditopolis (the city of Aphrodite).C.L. Whitcombe.Minoan snake goddess.8.Snakes,Egypt magic and women.Minoan Snake Goddess Lucian of Samosata (De Dea Syria .4) identifies Aphrodite with Europa, the Phoenecian princess who Zeus transformed into a white bull abducted and carried to Crete. Pausanias states that the first to establish a cult of Aphrodite were the Assyrians, after the Assyrians the Paphians of Cyprus and then the Phoenicians at Ascalon. The Phoenicians in turn taught her worship to the people of Cythera.Pausanias, Description of Greece, I. XIV.7 An origin of (or significant influence on) the Greek love goddess from Near Eastern traditions was seen with some skepticism in classical 19th century scholarship. Authors like A. Enmann (Kypros und der Ursprung des Aphroditekultes 1881) attempted to portray the cult of Aphrodite as a native Greek development. Scholarly opinion on this question has shifted significantly since the 1980s, notably due to Walter Burkert (1984), and the significant influence of the Near East on early Greek religion in general (and on the cult of Aphrodite in particular) is now widely recognized as dating to a period of Orientalization during the 8th century BC, when archaic Greece was on the fringes of the Neo-Assyrian Empire.see Burkert in his introduction to The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age (1992), especially in pp 1-6. An important parallel between Ishtar and Aphrodite is their identification as the evening star. Babylonian astrology associated the planet Venus with Ishtar. This presumably follows a yet earlier Sumerian tradition identifying Inanna with the planet Venus. Scholars such as Bendt Alster have suggested that this identification may go back to the Early Bronze Age. This identification is later than the archaic period of "Orientalization". In native Greek tradition, the planet had two names, Hesperos as the evening star and Eosphoros as the morning star. The Greeks adopted the identification of the morning and the evening star as well as its identification as Ishtar/Aphrodite during the 4th century BC, along with other items of Babylonian astrology such as the zodiac (Eudoxus of Cnidus). The Ancient Greeks and Romans often equated their deities with foreign ones in a process known as interpretatio graeca. Aphrodite was equated by the Greeks to Egyptian Hathor, Assyrian Mylitta, Canaanite/Phoenician Astarte and Arabian Alilat. Comparison with the Indo-European dawn goddess It has long been accepted in comparative mythology that Aphrodite (regardless of possible oriental influences) preserves some aspects of the Indo-European dawn goddess *Hausos (properly Greek Eos, Latin Aurora, Sanskrit Ushas).Dumézil.Ouranos-Vàruna:Ètude de mythologie compáree indo-européene. Paris Maisonneuve.1934 Janda (2010) etymologizes her name as "she who rises from the foam the ocean" and points to Hediod's account of Aphrodite's birth as an archaic reflex of Indo-European myth. Aphrodite rising out of the waters after Cronus defeats Uranus as a mytheme would then be directly cognate to the Rigvedic myth of Indra defeating Vrtra, liberating Ushas. Roman Venus was in origin a genuinely Italic reflex of the dawn goddess (besides Aurora), but she became identified with Aphrodite at such an early time that it is now difficult to recover elements of her native cult. Aphrodite Ourania and Aphrodite Pandemos By the late 5th century BC, philosophers might separate Aphrodite into two separate goddesses, not individuated in cult: Aphrodite Ourania, born from the sea foam after Cronus castrated Uranus, and Aphrodite Pandemos, the common Aphrodite "of all the folk," born from Zeus and Dione.E.g. Plato, Symposium 181a-d. Among the neo-Platonists and eventually their Christian interpreters, Aphrodite Ourania figures as the celestial Aphrodite, representing the love of body and soul, while Aphrodite Pandemos is associated with mere physical love. The representation of Aphrodite Ourania, with a foot resting on a tortoise, was read later as emblematic of discretion in conjugal love; the image is credited to Phidias, in a chryselephantine sculpture made for Elis, of which we have only a passing remark by Pausanias.Pausanias, Periegesis vi.25.1; Aphrodite Pandemos was represented in the same temple riding on a goat, symbol of purely carnal rut: "The meaning of the tortoise and of the he-goat I leave to those who care to guess," Pausanias remarks. The image was taken up again after the Renaissance: see [http://www.emblems.arts.gla.ac.uk/french/emblem.php?id=FALc195 Andrea Alciato, Emblemata / Les emblemes (1584)]. Thus, according to the character Pausanias in Plato's Symposium,Plato, Symposium 180e. Aphrodite is two goddesses, one older the other younger. The older, Urania, is the "heavenly" daughter of Uranus, and inspires homosexual male (and more specifically, ephebic) love/eros; the younger is named Pandemos, the daughter of Zeus and Dione, and all love for women comes from her. Pandemos is the common Aphrodite. The speech of Pausanias distinguishes two manifestations of Aphrodite, represented by the two stories: Aphrodite Ourania ("heavenly" Aphrodite), and Aphrodite Pandemos ("Common" Aphrodite).Richard L. Hunter, Plato's Symposium, Oxford University Press: 2004, p. 44 Cult of Aphrodite The epithet Aphrodite Acidalia was occasionally added to her name, after the spring she used to bathe in, located in Boeotia (Virgil I, 720). She was also called Kypris or Cytherea after her birth-places in Cyprus and Cythera, respectively, both centers of her cult. She was associated with Hesperia and frequently accompanied by the Oreads, nymphs of the mountains. Her festival, Aphrodisia, was celebrated across Greece but particularly in Athens and Corinth. At the temple of Aphrodite on the summit of Acrocorinth (before the Roman destruction of the city in 146 BC) intercourse with her priestesses was considered a method of worshiping Aphrodite. This temple was not rebuilt when the city was reestablished under Roman rule in 44 BC, but it is likely that the fertility rituals continued in the main city near the agora. Aphrodite was associated with, and often depicted with, the sea, dolphins, doves, swans, pomegranates, sceptres, apples, myrtle, rose trees, lime trees, clams, scallop shells, and pearls. One aspect of the cult of aophtyu and her precedents that Thomas Bulfinch's much-reprinted The Age of Fable; or Stories of Gods and Heroes (1855 etc.) elided"Our work is not for the learned, nor for the theologian, nor for the philosopher, but for the reader of English literature, of either sex, who wishes to comprehend the allusions so frequently made by public speakers, lecturers, essayists, and poets, and those which occur in polite conversation." Bulfinch's obituary in the Boston Evening Standard noted that the contents were "expurgated of all that would be offensive". was the practice of ritual prostitution in her shrines and temples. The euphemism in Greek is hierodule, "sacred servant." The practice was an inherent part of the rituals owed to Aphrodite's Near Eastern forebears, Sumerian Inanna and Akkadian Ishtar, whose temple priestesses were the "women of Ishtar," ishtaritum.Miroslav Marcovich, "From Ishtar to Aphrodite" Journal of Aesthetic Education 30.2, Special Issue: Distinguished Humanities Lectures II (Summer 1996) p 49. The practice has been documented in Babylon, Syria and Palestine, in Phoenician cities and the Tyrian colony Carthage, and for Hellenic Aphrodite in Cyprus, the center of her cult, Cythera, Corinth and in Sicily (Marcovich 1996:49). Aphrodite is everywhere the patroness of the hetaira and courtesan. In Ionia on the coast of Asia Minor, hierodules served in the temple of Artemis. The practice however is not attested in Athens and can be considered a foreign import. Myths Birth '' by Sandro Botticelli, 1485.]]"Foam-arisen" Aphrodite was born of the sea foam near Paphos, Cyprus after Cronus severed Uranus' genitals and threw them behind him into the sea, while the Erinyes emerged from the drops of blood. Hesiod's Theogony described that the genitals "were carried over the sea a long time, and white foam arose from the immortal flesh; with it a girl grew" to become Aphrodite. Aphrodite floated in on a scallop shell. When she arose, she was hailed as "Cyprian," and is referred to as such often, especially in the poetic works of Sappho. This myth of a fully mature Venus (the Roman name for Aphrodite), Venus AnadyomeneΑναδυόμενη (Anadyómenē), "rising up". ("Venus Rising From the Sea") was one of the iconic representations of Aphrodite, made famous in a much-admired painting by Apelles, now lost, but described in the Natural History of Pliny the Elder. ("The rock of the Greek"), Aphrodite's legendary birthplace in Paphos, Cyprus.]] Thus Aphrodite is of an older generation than Zeus. Iliad (Book V) expresses another version of her origin, by which she was considered a daughter of Dione, who was the original oracular goddess ("Dione" being simply "the goddess, the feminine form of Δíος, "Dios," the genitive of Zeus) at Dodona. Aphrodite herself was sometimes referred to as "Dione." Once the worship of Zeus had usurped the oak-grove oracle at Dodona, some poets made him out to be the father of Aphrodite. In Homer, Aphrodite, venturing into battle to protect her son, Aeneas, is wounded by Diomedes and returns to her mother, to sink down at her knee and be comforted. "Dione" seems to be an equivalent of Rhea, the Earth Mother, whom Homer has relocated to Olympus, and refers to a hypothesized original Proto-Indo-European pantheon, with the chief male god (Di-) represented by the sky and thunder, and the chief female god (feminine form of Di-) represented as the earth or fertile soil. Aphrodite's chief center of worship remained at Paphos, on the south-western coast of Cyprus, where the goddess of desire had been worshipped from the early Iron Age as Ishtar and Ashtaroth. It was said that, as Kythereia, she first tentatively came ashore at Cythera,Homer, Odyssey viii. 288; Herodotus i. 105; Pausanias iii. 23. § 1 ; Anacreon v. 9; Horace, Carmina i. 4. 5. a stopping place for trade and culture between Crete and the Peloponesus. Thus perhaps we have hints of the track of Aphrodite's original cult from the Levant to mainland Greece. In other tales, Aphrodite was a daughter of Thalassa and Zeus. Adulthood Aphrodite had no childhood: in every image and each reference she is born as an adult, nubile, and infinitely desirable. Aphrodite, in many of the late anecdotal myths involving her, is characterized as vain, ill-tempered and easily offended. Though she is one of the few gods of the Greek Pantheon to be actually married, she is frequently unfaithful to her husband. Hephaestus is one of the most even-tempered of the Hellenic deities; in the narrative embedded in the Odyssey Aphrodite seems to prefer Ares, the volatile god of war, as she was attracted to his violent nature. She is one of a few characters who played a major part in the original cause of the Trojan War itself: not only did she offer Helen of Troy to Paris, but the abduction was accomplished when Paris, seeing Helen for the first time, was inflamed with desire to have her—which is Aphrodite's realm. Due to her immense beauty, Zeus was frightened that she would be the cause of violence between the other gods. He married her off to Hephaestus, the dour, humorless god of smithing. In another version of this story, Hera, Hephaestus' mother, had cast him off Olympus; deeming him ugly and deformed. His revenge was to trap her in a magic throne, and then to demand Aphrodite's hand in return for Hera's release. Hephaestus was overjoyed at being married to the goddess of beauty and forged her beautiful jewelry, including the cestus, a girdle that made her even more irresistible to men. Her unhappiness with her marriage caused Aphrodite to seek out companionship from others, most frequently Ares, but also Adonis. Aphrodite and Psyche Aphrodite figures as a secondary character in the Tale of Eros and Psyche, which first appeared as a digressive story told by an old woman in Lucius Apuleius' novel, The Golden Ass, written in the second century A.D.. In it Aphrodite was jealous of the beauty of a mortal woman named Psyche. She asked Eros to use his golden arrows to cause Psyche to fall in love with the ugliest man on earth. Eros agreed, but then fell in love with Psyche on his own, by accidentally pricking himself with a golden arrow. Meanwhile, Psyche's parents were anxious that their daughter remained unmarried. They consulted an oracle who told them she was destined for no mortal lover, but a creature that lived on top of a particular mountain, that even the gods themselves feared. Eros had arranged for the oracle to say this. Psyche was resigned to her fate and climbed to the top of the mountain. She told the townsfolk that followed her to leave and let her face her fate on her own. There, Zephyrus, the west wind, gently floated her downwards. She entered a cave on the appointed mountain, surprised to find it full of jewelry and finery. Eros visited her every night in the cave and they made passionate love; he demanded only that she never light any lamps because he did not want her to know who he was (having wings made him distinctive). Her two sisters, jealous of Psyche, convinced her that her husband was a monster, and she should strike him with a dagger. So one night she lit a lamp, but recognizing Eros instantly, she dropped her dagger. Oil spilled from the lamp onto his shoulder, awaking him, and he fled, saying "Love cannot live where there is no trust!" , and with her foot resting on a tortoise (Musée du Louvre).]] When Psyche told her two jealous elder sisters what had happened, they rejoiced secretly and each separately walked to the top of the mountain and did as Psyche described her entry to the cave, hoping Eros would pick them instead. Eros was still heart broken and did not pick them and they fell to their deaths at the base of the mountain. Psyche searched for her love across much of Greece, finally stumbling into a temple to Demeter, where the floor was covered with piles of mixed grains. She started sorting the grains into organized piles and, when she finished, Demeter spoke to her, telling her that the best way to find Eros was to find his mother, Aphrodite, and earn her blessing. Psyche found a temple to Aphrodite and entered it. Aphrodite assigned her a similar task to Demeter's temple, but gave her an impossible deadline to finish it by. Eros intervened, for he still loved her, and caused some ants to organize the grains for her. Aphrodite was outraged at her success and told her to go to a field where deadly golden sheep grazed and get some golden wool. Psyche went to the field and saw the sheep but was stopped by a river-god, whose river she had to cross to enter the field. He told her the sheep were mean and vicious and would kill her, but if she waited until noontime, the sheep would go into the shade on the other side of the field and sleep; she could pick the wool that stuck to the branches and bark of the trees. Psyche did so and Aphrodite was even more outraged at her survival and success. Finally, Aphrodite claimed that the stress of caring for her son, depressed and ill as a result of Psyche's unfaithfulness, had caused her to lose some of her beauty. Psyche was to go to Hades and ask Persephone, the queen of the underworld, for a bit of her beauty in a black box that Aphrodite gave to Psyche. Psyche walked to a tower, deciding that the quickest way to the underworld would be to die. A voice stopped her at the last moment and told her a route that would allow her to enter and return still living, as well as telling her how to pass the three-headed dog Cerberus, Charon and the other dangers of the route. She was to not lend a hand to anyone in need. She baked two barley cakes for Cerberus, and took two coins for Charon. She pacified Cerberus with the barley cake and paid Charon to take her to Hades. On the way there, she saw hands reaching out of the water. A voice told her to toss a barley cake to them. She refused. Once there, Persephone said she would be glad to do Aphrodite a favor. She once more paid Charon, and gave the other barley cake to Cerberus. Psyche left the underworld and decided to open the box and take a little bit of the beauty for herself, thinking that if she did so, Eros would surely love her. Inside was a "Stygian sleep," which overtook her. Eros, who had forgiven her, flew to her body and wiped the sleep from her eyes, then begged Zeus and Aphrodite for their consent to his wedding of Psyche. They agreed and Zeus made her immortal. Aphrodite danced at the wedding of Eros and Psyche, and their subsequent child was named Hedone, or (in the Roman mythology) Voluptas. Adonis Aphrodite was Adonis' lover and a surrogate mother to him. Cinyras, the King of Cyprus, had an intoxicatingly beautiful daughter named Myrrha. When Myrrha's mother commits Hubris against Aphrodite by claiming her daughter is more beautiful than the famed goddess, Myrrha is punished with a never ending lust for her own father. Cinyras is repulsed by this, but Myrrha disguises herself as a prostitute, and secretly sleeps with her father at night. Eventually, Myrrha becomes pregnant and is discovered by Cinyras. In a rage, he chases her out of the house with a knife. Myrrha flees from him, praying to the gods for mercy as she runs. The gods hear her plea, and change her into a Myrrh tree so her father cannot kill her. Eventually, Cinyras takes his own life in an attempt to restore the family's honor. Myrrha gives birth to a baby boy named Adonis. Aphrodite happens by the Myrrh tree and, seeing him, takes pity on the infant. She places Adonis in a box, and takes him down to Hades so that Persephone can care for him. Adonis grows into a strikingly handsome young man, and Aphrodite eventually returns for him. Persephone, however, is loath to give him up, and wishes Adonis would stay with her in the underworld. The two goddesses begin such a quarrel that Zeus is forced to intercede. He decrees that Adonis will spend a third of the year with Aphrodite, a third of the year with Persephone, and a third of the year with whomever he wishes. Adonis, of course, chooses Aphrodite. Adonis begins his year on the earth with Aphrodite. One of his greatest passions is hunting, and although Aphrodite is not naturally a hunter, she takes up the sport just so she can be with Adonis. They spend every waking hour with one another, and Aphrodite is enraptured with him. However, her anxiety begins to grow over her neglected duties, and she is forced to leave him for a short time. Before she leaves, she gives Adonis one warning: do not attack an animal who shows no fear. Adonis agrees to her advice, but, secretly doubting her skills as a huntress, quickly forgets her warning. Not long after Aphrodite leaves, Adonis comes across an enormous wild boar, much larger than any he has ever seen. It is suggested that the boar is the god Ares, one of Aphrodite's lovers made jealous through her constant doting on Adonis. Although boars are dangerous and will charge a hunter if provoked, Adonis disregards Aphrodite's warning and pursues the giant creature. Soon, however, Adonis is the one being pursued; he is no match for the giant boar. In the attack, Adonis is castrated by the boar, and dies from a loss of blood. Aphrodite rushes back to his side, but she is too late to save him and can only mourn over his body. Wherever Adonis' blood falls, Aphrodite causes anemones to grow in his memory. She vows that on the anniversary of his death, every year there will be a festival held in his honor. On his death, Adonis goes back to the underworld, and Persephone is delighted to see him again. Eventually, Aphrodite realizes that he is there, and rushes back to retrieve him. Again, she and Persephone bicker over who is allowed to keep Adonis until Zeus intervenes. This time, he says that Adonis must spend six months with Aphrodite and six months with Persephone, the way it should have been in the first place. The Judgement of Paris The gods and goddesses as well as various mortals were invited to the marriage of Peleus and Thetis (the eventual parents of Achilles). Only the goddess Eris (Discord) was not invited, but she arrived with a golden apple inscribed with the word kallistēi ("to the fairest one"), which she threw among the goddesses. Aphrodite, Hera, and Athena all claimed to be the fairest, and thus the rightful owner of the apple. , probably Roman ca. 100BC, Archeological Museum, Nicosia, Cyprus.]] The goddesses chose to place the matter before Zeus, who, not wanting to favor one of the goddesses, put the choice into the hands of Paris. Hera tried to bribe Paris with Asia Minor, while Athena offered wisdom, fame and glory in battle, but Aphrodite whispered to Paris that if he were to choose her as the fairest he would have the most beautiful mortal woman in the world as a wife, and he accordingly chose her. This woman was Helen. The other goddesses were enraged by this and through Helen's abduction by Paris they brought about the Trojan War. Pygmalion and Galatea Pygmalion was a sculptor who had never found a woman worthy of his love. Aphrodite took pity on him and decided to show him the wonders of love. One day, Pygmalion was inspired by a dream of Aphrodite to make a woman out of ivory resembling her image, and he called her Galatea. He fell in love with the statue and decided he could not live without her. He prayed to Aphrodite, who carried out the final phase of her plan and brought the exquisite sculpture to life. Pygmalion loved Galatea and they were soon married. Another version of this myth tells that the women of the village where Pygmalion lived grew angry that he had not married. They asked Aphrodite to force him to marry. Aphrodite agreed and went that very night to Pygmalion, and asked him to pick a woman to marry. She told him that if he did not pick one, she would do so for him. Not wanting to be married, he begged her for more time, asking that he be allowed to make a sculpture of Aphrodite before he had to choose his bride. Flattered, she accepted. Pygmalion spent a lot of time making small clay sculptures of the goddess, claiming it was needed so he could pick the right pose. As he started making the actual sculpture he was shocked to discover he actually wanted to finish, even though he knew he would have to marry someone when he finished. The reason he wanted to finish it was that he had fallen in love with the sculpture. The more he worked on it, the more it changed, until it no longer resembled Aphrodite at all. At the very moment Pygmalion stepped away from the finished sculpture Aphrodite appeared and told him to choose his bride. Pygmalion chose the statue. Aphrodite told him that could not be, and asked him again to choose a bride. Pygmalion put his arms around the statue, and asked Aphrodite to turn him into a statue so he could be with her. Aphrodite took pity on him and brought the statue to life instead. Consorts and children Gods # Hephaestus # Ares #* Phobos #* Deimos #* Adrestia #* Harmonia #* The Erotes #** Eros #** Anteros #** Himeros #** Pothos # Poseidon #* Rhode # Hermes #* Tyche #* Peitho #* Eunomia #* Hermaphroditos # Dionysus #* The Charites (Graces) #** Thalia #** Euphrosyne #** Aglaea #* Priapus Mortals # Adonis #*Beroe # Anchises #* Aeneas # Butes #* Eryx Other tales In one version of the story of Hippolytus, she was the catalyst for his death. He scorned the worship of Aphrodite for Artemis and, in revenge, Aphrodite caused his stepmother, Phaedra, to fall in love with him, knowing Hippolytus would reject her. In the most popular version of the story, as told in the play Hippolytus by Euripides, Phaedra seeks revenge against Hippolytus by killing herself and, in her suicide note, telling Theseus, her husband and Hippolytus' father, that Hippolytus had raped her. Hippolytus was oath-bound not to mention Phaedra's love for him and nobly refused to defend himself despite the consequences. Theseus then cursed his son, a curse that Poseidon was bound to fulfill and so Hippolytus was laid low by a bull from the sea that caused his chariot-team to panic and wreck his vehicle. Hippolytus forgives his father before he dies and Artemis reveals the truth to Theseus before vowing to kill the one Aphrodite loves (Adonis) for revenge. Glaucus of Corinth angered Aphrodite and she made her horses angry during the funeral games of King Pelias. They tore him apart. His ghost supposedly frightened horses during the Isthmian Games. In one Greek myth, Aphrodite placed the curse of snakes for hair and the stone-gaze upon Medusa and her sisters. Aphrodite was jealous of the three sisters beauty, and she grew so jealous she cursed them. In figurative art File:CallipygianVenus.jpg|''The Venus Kallipygos.'' Aphrodite Kallipygos, "Aphrodite of the Beautiful Buttocks"),The word callipygian is defined as "having shapely buttocks" by Merriam-Webster. is a type of nude female statue of the Hellenistic era. It depicts a partially draped womanConventionally presumed to be Venus, though it may equally be a portrait of a mortal woman, such as a hetaira, or an image of the goddess modeled on one such raising her light peplosThe gesture of Aphrodite/Venus lifting of the robe symbolized religious initiation and the ancient Greeks worshiped the woman's "rich" buttocks to obtain great wealth on earth as the two Syracusan sisters who inspired the Kallipygos idea, had accomplished. to uncover her hips and buttocks, and looking back and down over her shoulder, perhaps to evaluate them File:Cnidus Aphrodite Altemps Inv8619.jpg|The Ludovisi Cnidian Aphrodite, Roman marble copy (torso and thighs) with restored head, arms, legs and drapery support. The Aphrodite of Cnidus was one of the most famous works of the Attic sculptor Praxiteles (4th century BC). File:Aphrodite fountain.jpg|''Fountain of Aphrodite in Mexico City. File:Venus demedici.jpg|An engraving of the Venus de' Medici. The goddess is depicted in a fugitive, momentary pose, as if surprised in the act of emerging from the sea, to which the dolphin at her feet alludes. The dolphin would not have been a necessary support for the bronze original. Venus' modest pose is similar to pose held by the Venus in The Birth of Venus, by Sandro Botticelli, and many different statues from antiquity. File:Venus pudica Massimo.jpg|''Aphrodite of Menophantos'' a Venus Pudica signed by Menophantos, first century BCE, found at San Gregorio al Celio, Rome (Museo Nazionale Romano), The Aphrodite of Menophantos is a Roman marble statue of Venus of the Capitoline Venus type. File:Aphrodite Anadyomene from Pompeii cropped.jpg|The Venus Anadyomene, from Pompeii, believed to be a copy of a lost work by Apelles. File:Ludovisi throne Altemps Inv8570.jpg|The Ludovisi Throne (460 BC?) is believed to be a classical Greek bas-relief, although it has also been alleged to be a 19th century forgery File:Venus redon.jpeg|''The Birth of Venus'' (1912), by Odilon Redon. File:Paolina Borghese Canova.jpg|''Venus Victrix'' (1805-08), by Antonio Canova depicts Pauline Bonaparte as the goddess. File:Aphrodite swan BM D2.jpg|Aphrodite riding a swan: Attic white-ground red-figured kylix, ca. 460, found at Kameiros (Rhodes). References Bibliography * C. Kerényi (1951). The Gods of the Greeks. * Walter Burkert (1985). Greek Religion (Harvard University Press). Notes External links *Theoi Project, Aphrodite information from classical literature, Greek and Roman art *Greek Mythology: Who is Aphrodite? *The Glory which Was Greece from a Female Perspective *Sappho's Hymn to Aphrodite, with a brief explanation af:Afrodite ar:أفروديت az:Afrodita bn:আফ্রোদিতে be:Афрадыта be-x-old:Афрадыта bs:Afrodita br:Afrodite bg:Афродита ca:Afrodita cs:Afrodita cy:Aphrodite da:Afrodite de:Aphrodite et:Aphrodite el:Αφροδίτη (μυθολογία) es:Afrodita eo:Afrodito (diino) eu:Afrodita fa:آفرودیته fr:Aphrodite gl:Afrodita ko:아프로디테 hy:Աֆրոդիտե hi:ऐफ़्रोडाइटी hr:Afrodita id:Afrodit ia:Aphrodite is:Afródíta it:Afrodite he:אפרודיטה ka:აფროდიტე la:Aphrodite lv:Afrodīte lb:Aphrodite lt:Afroditė hu:Aphrodité mk:Афродита ml:അഫ്രൊഡൈറ്റി mr:ऍफ्रडाइटी arz:افروديت ms:Aphrodite mn:Афродита nl:Aphrodite ja:アプロディーテー no:Afrodite oc:Afrodita pa:ਐਫ਼੍ਰੋਡਾਇਟੀ nds:Aphrodite pl:Afrodyta pt:Afrodite ro:Afrodita ru:Афродита sq:Afërdita simple:Aphrodite sk:Afrodita sl:Afrodita sr:Афродита sh:Afrodita fi:Afrodite sv:Afrodite tl:Aphrodite ta:அப்ரடைட்டி th:อาโฟร์ไดท์ tg:Афродита tr:Afrodit uk:Афродіта ur:ایفرودیت vi:Aphrodite fiu-vro:Aphrodite zh:阿佛洛狄忒 Category:Greek mythology Category:Greek gods Category:Eros in ancient Greece Category:Deities in the Iliad Category:Greek goddesses Category:Aphrodite Category:Twelve Olympians Category:Love and lust goddesses Category:Indo-European deities Category:Offspring of Zeus Category:Offspring of Uranus Category:Requests for audio pronunciation (English) Category:Requests for audio pronunciation (Greek)